NEW DELHI: The central government’s two key ministries and a department, which are tasked with monitoring and regulating misleading advertisements and false claims about food products, have failed to detect any such promotions in the past two years, a series of RTIs have revealed.
This is despite the fact that the Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPi), a national think tank on nutrition consisting of independent medical experts, paediatricians, and nutritionists, said they have spotted a number of such misleading advertisements on a daily basis in electronic and print media and, of late, social media, too.
The Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which plays a crucial role in regulating and monitoring advertisements, replied in the negative in an RTI reply to a question on which food product ads they have identified as misleading between September 2023 and March 2025 under the Advertising Code (Rule 7) under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995.
In its reply, the I&B ministry said that, according to readily available records, no food product advertisements were identified as misleading between September 2023 and March 2025 under the rules, and so the question of taking action “doesn’t arise.”
Similarly, the Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution ministry was asked the same question, and their reply was “the required information is not available.”
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), a statutory body under the Union Health and Family Welfare ministry, which regulates the manufacture, storage, distribution, sale, and import of food articles, and also establishes standards to ensure food safety, was also asked the same question.
The FSSAI, in its reply, said that it regularly monitors advertisements disseminated through various platforms, including e-commerce portals, print media, and social media. It said it also examines complaints and representations received and initiates actions in accordance with the provisions of the Act in instances where non-compliance is observed.
However, it said, "An information shall ordinarily be provided in the form in which it is sought unless it would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority. Reference to this, the requested data is not maintained at FSSAI in the manner as asked in the RTI.”
NAPi, which has been monitoring misleading advertisements, particularly in the food and beverage sector, has found many instances of non-compliance with regulations, including a lack of curbs on misleading ads for unhealthy food products and delays in referring complaints to monitoring panels, filed a series of RTIs in the past two months with different ministries and departments to find out what action the government has taken.
“We were not surprised that the government has not taken any action, but were certainly shocked that a system has been created that does not do any good and continues to ask people to keep complaining,” Dr Arun Gupta, a paediatrician, nutrition advocate and NAPi Convener told this paper.
He said the centre should amend the existing laws of the advertisement code, norms of journalistic conduct to ban ads if foods high on sugar, fats or salt (HFSS) are promoted as they contribute to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
This was promised by the union Health Ministry in 2017 through a National Multi-sector plan of action on NCDs.
On the recent Union Health Ministry’s direction to showcase “sugar and oil boards” in all government offices and public institutions, a story first reported by this paper, Dr Gupta said, "The real culprit is marketing, advertising, sponsorship of sports by ultra-processed foods (UPF) and HFSS food product industry. It's marketing that increases consumption of unhealthy diets.”
“This is a communication attempt by the centre; however, to be effective in reducing consumption, legal frameworks are required that would put Front-of-Pack Nutrition (FOPN) Labelling warning and banning ads of HFSS,” he added.
He said the existing regulatory policies remain ineffective in minimising junk food advertisements, which are mostly misleading and especially directed at children and adolescents.
“The intent that there shall be no ‘misleading advertisement’ needs a clearly worded law,” he said.
Quoting their report, “Junk Push: Rising Consumption of Ultra-processed foods in India- Policy, Politics and Reality," which was released last year on the rising ultra-processed food consumption in India, and its promotion, he said, “it is high time the government amends the television advertising rules to stop promoting unhealthy food.”
Dr Gupta also pointed out that FSSAI has sought three months to comply with the Supreme Court order on front-of-pack labelling.
“FSSAI is considering new comments generated from consultations with FBOs (Food Business Operator), which are blatant conflicts of interest, to be given to an expert committee for further consideration. This is unfair. Why were they not able to give public comments in 2022? And if a new process is added, experts and people would like to submit fresh evidence and comments too for the expert committee to look at. We have no idea what the expert committee has said already, has it given the same weightage to food industry comments,” he added.